


Conversations With Ghosts

by tommygirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ficathon, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 14:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tommygirl/pseuds/tommygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While teaching at Hogwarts, Remus remembers a time in his life and finds himself talking with ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations With Ghosts

The conversations with the ghosts started a few weeks upon his return to Hogwarts. He wished he could blame the dementors or the fact that Sirius, his old friend and lover, had escaped Azkaban. Hell, if he thought he could convince himself, he’d blame his monthly transformations.

He knew the likelihood of being surrounded by so many things of his past might do him in a bit. Every turned corner on the grounds reminded him of his friends and all that they had shared in those times. He knew this, but the job was an opportunity he could not pass up on—monetarily or mentally—and he found himself saying “yes” to Dumbledore’s offer before he even had a chance to process what it meant.

He hadn’t expected Harry to look so much like James and Lily. One afternoon, he caught himself starting at the boy and decided that was what had done him in. It was the fact that every time he was in the middle of a class, he would glance over at Harry and think it was James. And it was the odd flutter in his chest whenever Harry stared at him, his eyes searching Remus’ for some sort of understanding, because that was how Lily would look at him whenever he did something she didn’t quite comprehend.

The ghosts, it seemed, thrived on these moments. They enveloped Remus within their grasp and some nights it was all he could do to keep from going completely mad. He wondered what use he’d be to anyone if that were the case. And the ghosts, it seemed, remembered things—words, slivers of time, _promises_ —that Remus had spent thirteen years running from.

“He needs someone,” her voice would say.

“He needs you.”

“We both know that’s not possible.”

“But—“

“I’m counting on you, Remus. You were always the most beautiful person I knew. I trust you to watch out for him.”

That would be it for a day or so—no soft words pelting his cheeks through the wind. Things would return to normal (or as normal as was possible in those times). He would teach his lessons and find himself agreeing to help Harry with the dementors. Because Harry needed someone and Remus knew all-too-well the isolation of a life with no family to lean on.

Harry was his family as far as he was concerned, but Remus never mentioned their connection. He allowed little snippets to slip out occasionally—how he knew Harry’s parents and considered them friends—but tried to keep a certain amount of distance between the two of them. It served no great purpose for Harry to know certain things yet. It would be selfish on his part to latch onto the boy.

Remus made certain that a decent amount of time passed between each of their meetings outside the classroom. Again, he would try to tell himself that it was all for Harry’s own good, but Remus knew this was much more an act of self-preservation. Remus was not willing to lose anyone else. Remus did not want another ghost haunting him, showing up unvited and reopening wounds, and already he could sense that short-lived flicker within Harry which terrified him. He had lost too many people already, mourned quietly in the background, to endure that again.

Sometimes looking at Harry was too painful for Remus and he would find himself stepping away from the boy and trying to pretend his presence had no affect on him. Remus loathed himself for being so weak, turning his back on the child of his best friends, closing that door and separating himself from the memories, feelings and heartache that went with them. It never quite worked that way though. He could play his music, get caught up in a book, or prepare his lesson plans—still Harry would be on his mind.

And the ghosts would return.

“He needs you,” she would say, her eyes, Harry’s eyes, focused intently on him.

Remus would smile. He had always loved her eyes—raw, kind, and full of everything going on around them. He would smile and relent, “I’ll do what I can.”

It had always been her eyes that did him. Impossible to resist and downright scary when she was feeling especially stubborn or angry, usually regarding some prank that she had witnessed. She would roll her eyes and say to him, “Honestly, I expect more of you, Remus.” Even though he was rarely the instigator. Even though it seemed more fitting that she should scold Sirius or James rather than the way she took to chiding him.

Those bloody eyes and their ability to make him feel everything so inherently.

Remus never could say “no” to Lily when her eyes got big and wide, green pools of hope and yearning...and wasn’t that what love was all about? Wanting to give this girl-someone who had become something of a best friend (in the way that his other best friends could never quite understand—“You snog girls, Mooney. You don’t talk Charms with them,” James would call out as Remus would follow Lily toward the library.)-the world and make everything... _better_...for her.

Wasn’t that love?

There was a time when he thought he was in love with Lily. It was before James and Sirius each became more to them, before things shifted ever-so-slightly in the cosmos and their hands no longer fit together right. Things seemed so simple then, _so infinite_ , and it was all because of her. Lily was safe. He could pour out his darkest fears and silliest dreams and she would never make him feel ridiculous. She would nod, smile, and brush his hair back off his forehead.

Sometimes, even though he loved Sirius and witnessed the relationship burgeoning between James and Lily, he wanted to get back to that field where they had laid together so often. The exchange of soft, sweet kisses under the late afternoon sky that were filled with unspoken promises of loyalty, affection and the hope of a future without pain. The delicate feel of her hand in his. Sometimes he wanted her to be _the one_ because he and Lily never fought with one another. Remus never worried that her temper would get her into trouble or that he would say that one wrong thing that sent her running away from him. Remus never found himself wondering if he was the victim of empty words of devotion time after time because when Lily told someone she loved them, that she cared for them, she meant it. Always.

That was what Remus hated most about his behavior toward Harry during those self-imposed isolations of his. Remus would rationalize it away. Harry was a student and he was his professor. He couldn’t play favorites, no matter how much he found he cherished the boy at times, no matter how often the ghosts visited and told him that he was needed. Remus couldn’t play favorites and he would sit in his room, reminding himself that there was only so much he could do.

It never satisfied the ghosts. He would awaken in the middle of a nightmare to find Lily hovering over him with a cross look and those damn inescapable eyes that spoke volumes far more than words ever could. She would shake her head and say, “You promised you wouldn’t forget.”

“I haven’t.”

“I’m counting on you with him. He needs your influence. He takes too much after his father sometimes.”

“But he has your heart.” She smiled and he could remember how she used to push his hair back off his face. His hands moved of their own accord, pushing his locks back away from his face, and he would add, “I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will.”

“Such faith in me when I couldn’t save you.”

“You weren’t meant to. You were meant to save my son.”

The ghosts stopped not long after his reunion with Sirius and his resignation from Hogwarts. He wrote a letter to Harry, explaining things that probably didn’t belong in a letter, and ended up not giving it to the boy, making the decision to talk with him…someday.

All he could do was make a promise. A promise that had started with his mother in a field in the middle of his sixth year when everything was about possibility. Remus smiled at Harry and said, “We’ll meet again, Harry.” He stared at the boy and silently added, “The ghosts will see to it.”

_{fin}_

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Remus Remix, based on this drabble:
> 
>  
> 
> _They become friends in fifth year. Lily found Remus to be "less of a boy" than his mates and Remus thought she was excellent at Charms and pretty, too._
> 
> _Summer after sixth year, lying side-by-side in a field, they held hands and stared at the sky._
> 
> _"There's a lily-of-the-valley, just like you." Remus said, pointing at a cloud._
> 
> _"We'll never forget this, will we?"_
> 
> _"No." Remus replied, and kissed her again._
> 
> _Seventh year, when she had given into James' pleas and he was shagging Sirius, they drank butterbeer and complained about their boyfriends together._
> 
> _He couldn’t find Sirius anywhere after a terrible fight, so Lily made him tea in her kitchen and said, "The berk will turn up." and "You're the most beautiful person I know."_


End file.
